


Memories of a Boy You Haven't Met

by businessendofamorningstar



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Death, Multi, Sadness, Spoilers, spoilers for the current arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11702361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/businessendofamorningstar/pseuds/businessendofamorningstar
Summary: The dreams start getting strange on the third night. Faces of people she had yet to meet watching her as they burn in the flames that spark from an unknown source. It continues, to show her old and crying, clinging to bits of cloth, a necklace, a sword, a charred flute.





	Memories of a Boy You Haven't Met

The dreams start getting strange on the third night. Faces of people she had yet to meet watching her as they burn in the flames that spark from an unknown source. It continues, to show her old and crying, clinging to bits of cloth, a necklace, a sword, a charred flute.

Memories from these friends she has yet to meet. She wakes up with the pain of an entire life lost before she’s even 15. She goes to breakfast with her father, sitting in icy silence as her heart grows heavier. Eventually, she makes eye contact with her father, who’s watching her very carefully, and the tears start. She cannot get their faces out of her mind, cannot get rid of the terrible expressions in their faces, cannot get rid of the guilt that comes from knowing that she lives on. She’s just a child now, without her mother, with a father who is trying, with a people who are trying, with a responsibility that she does not understand the implications of.

Eventually she sets out, on her father’s wishes, moves on to the next stage of her Aramente, tries to push everything past her mind and do her best. She’s a skilled druid, a powerful leader; she doesn’t know these things just yet. It isn’t until much later, when she starts to really make friends on her journey - a dragonborn, more half elves, eventually a human that she’ll come to love like a brother she never had, two gnomes, a goliath and a bear she she loves with all her heart - that she realizes that she really has worth beyond her duty to her people.

People die, but the dreams are pushed far from her mind, and the panic is only in the moment, until Keyleth is alone for the first night in a castle they built themselves, in a city where they are heroes, practically kings. It isn’t until she’s alone that the dream comes back, she sees them dead, and then her old, and she believes that it’s not the same faces, it’s just a new anxiety, a new fear. She tells no one of these dreams.

Until Vax says he loves her, and Percy dies, and the pain is fresh again, and everything is terrible and she’s crying alone for a loss she hasn’t felt yet. Every day they go through the same terrible things and she can’t help but wonder if this is the last day she’ll see her friends.

Eventually she completes her Aramente, after Scanlan has left and after Tary has taken Percy from her and Vax is a champion of a god she doesn’t trust (she doesn’t trust many), and the victory feels hollow. Her entire life had led to this moment, but after defeating the Chroma Conclave, and the Briarwoods, and everything else they had accomplished, it felt like nothing to her. The victory is hollow when they head back to Whitestone, when she wears the mantle in public, and though she is full of power and is the leader of her people, she’s still goofy with her friends, and eventually her and Tary grow closer, and she learns to love him.

Then Tary is taken, and Scanlan comes back, and there’s something new to fight, and Keyleth watches Vax die and the dream rushes back to her. She sees everyone looking at her in panic, like she is actually the leader she is supposed to be, and she sees them panicking and Vax is a pile of ashes and she cannot comprehend how this is happening so fast. She sees the faces in pairs - the one’s from her original dream and the one’s from the new dream and she can see the similarities. Fate had different plans for her friends, but they are here now, and Vax is not, and she grabs them and runs.

They have nowhere to go, and she knows that this won’t end well. She’s known since she was a child. Vax comes back, but it’s another hollow victory, and she knows he’s on borrowed time, she knows that nothing with her friends in permanent, and it hurts more and more with each passing second.

For a moment, she resents Vex for bringing her back when she jumped.

For a moment, she wishes she had never taken her Aramente.

For a moment, she hopes that her dreams are wrong, that her whole life is just a nightmare.

And then Vecna is back. And everything goes wrong, and Keyleth has no one to grab when she runs again. She’s alone, finally, and she cries and screams and curses every god they had met, every god that had tried to help. They had only done their best. The anger subsides, and she begins to explore the Feywild. She’s terrified to go home, knowing that Vecna will find her.

He will find her here.

She cannot go home, she’s a failure of her people, of her friends, of everyone she’d known. She finds the Court, begins her life with them. Syngourn is there, but that hurts too, so she avoids the large city. Keyleth becomes a creature of the Feywild, wild and unpredictable and all powerful.


End file.
